The Maid of the Whispering Hills eBook

On that fateful morning when the rising sun saw the
slim canoes of the Nakonkirhirinons trailing around
the lower bend, Maren Le Moyne stood by the little
window in the small room to the east of the Baptiste
cabin and covered her face with her hands.

Great breaths lifted her breast, breaths that fluttered
her open lips and could not fill the gasping lungs
beneath, that sounded in the little room like tearless
tearing sobs.

“Heavenly Mother!” she gasped between
them; “Thou who art woman...Mary...”

But the prayer hung aborted between the shuddering
sighs.... Who shall say that it is not such a
cry, torn from the depths of the spirit by instinct
groping for its god, which reaches swiftest the Eternal
Infinite?

Until the last sound had faded into the morning, until
the last little ripple had widened to the shores and
died among the willows, until the screaming birds,
startled from the edges of the river, had settled into
quiet, she stood so, fainting in her Gethsemane.
She alone of all the post had remained away from the
great gate where was gathered the populace at the
nearest vantage point.

Silence of the young day hung in the palisade, a silence
that cut the soul with its tragic portent.

Even little Francette Moline, weeping openly, pressed
close in the mass and jerked with unconscious savagery
of spirit the short ears of the husky at her heels,—­that
Loup whom no man dared to touch save only the master
his fierce spirit must needs acknowledge. It had
been DesCaut by brutality. Now it was the little
maid by love.

Strange cat of the woods, Francette could be as riotous
in her tenderness as in her enmity.

In the bastions Dupre and Garcon and Gifford watched
the scene with the grim quiet of men born in the wilderness,
while at the portholes trapper and voyageur and the
venturers from Grand Portage handled their guns and
waited.

None knew what might happen, for these Indians were
not to be judged by any standard they knew.

Henri Baptiste held the trembling Marie in his arm,
while Mora and Anon and Ninette clung together in
a white-faced group. A little way aside Micene
Bordoux comforted a frightened woman and held a child
by the hand.

Big Bard McLellan stood by a porthole, his eyes always
pensive with his own sadness, gazing with grave sorrow
to where McElroy swung down the slope between his
captors.

Thus they watched his going, and he had been spared
that sick pain had he known.

When it was over, Prix Laroux turned back to the deserted
factory and stood hesitating on its step.

This was one of the crises which so commonly confronted
the fur industry in the North-west.

What had he a right to do?

The simple man considered carefully. What right
but the right of humanity to do the best for the many
could send a servant into the seat of power?